


lessons

by hydrospanners



Series: renegade [5]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Drabble, Gen, a lightsaber is what my tin can son will get, and no one knows what the fuck rea is doing, canon can go to hell, if my tin can son wants a lightsaber, kira has a minor professional crisis, the one where t7 has a special request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 12:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14402430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrospanners/pseuds/hydrospanners
Summary: It’s been months since their meeting on Tython, and Kira Carsen is still struggling to figure out her new master. (This Jedi business is no walk in the park either.)





	lessons

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr.

Teeseven’s insides spill haphazardly across the deck of the cargo bay, a mess of wires and chips, servos and spikes. Tools and blasters and lightsabers have been tossed into careless mounds at the feet of his chassis while half a dozen lightsaber crystals ( _lightsaber crystals_ ) just lie there, scattered among the chaos. It’s the sort of disaster that would short every circuit the droid has, so it’s probably best he’s shut down for whatever is happening here. Not that his frantic beeps could be heard over the deafening pulse of trashy synth music blaring through the intercom.

In the middle of it all sits Rea, goggles over her eyes and hair a mess as she puts the torch to a metal rod. Kira wonders if she even knows what time it is.

“Hey boss,” she shouts to be heard over the music. The Batwings, maybe?

Rea flicks the torch off and raises her goggles. Not a hint of red rimming her eyes, no dark circles or puffiness. It’s 0400 and she looks fresh as a sunnydew. Kira wants to slug her.

“My wayward padawan stirs.” Rea grins a shit-eating grin that says she knows perfectly well what time it is. This is her idea of punishment. Kira’s sure she’s suffered worse, but for the moment she can’t think what it might’ve been. No one on Korriban ever made her listen to The Batwings. “Good morning, my student.”

“Look,” Kira starts, “I said I was sorry–”

Rea waves the apology away. “I’m not your babysitter. What you do on your own time is your business.”

She isn’t at all like Master Kiwiiks, talking her through every problem, every mistake. There are no leading questions or thoughtful silences. Life with Rea, she’s finding, is all freedom and consequences and the mad rush to keep pace.

Kira always thought she would relish this, the chance to make her own choices. She thought she was proving herself, proving that she was ready to be a Jedi in her own right. Now she’s finding she was wrong, and when Jedi are wrong, people die. She wonders if that’s the lesson Rea’s trying to teach her. She wonders if Rea’s trying to teach her at all.

Kira joins her on the floor, taking a saber from the pile and turning it in her hands. The hilt is dark and wicked and familiar, the one Tarnis had carried. There are more than a dozen other sabers scattered around it, and her stomach turns as she realizes where they all came from, what they are.

“Lightsaber parts are expensive,” Rea explains. “That bother you?”

Kira thinks of Korriban, of how the Sith would kill each other and wear their enemies’ weapons as a badge of honor. She thinks of that clearing on Tython, of the trail of bodies this woman left behind. “A little.”

“Fair enough.” Rea doesn’t offer more than that. She doesn’t explain herself anymore than she demands explanations from Kira.

“Do I want to know what you’re trying to do?”

“Teeseven mentioned an upgrade. Figured he deserved it after slogging all over Taris.”

That swamp of a planet hadn’t been kind to any of them, but the muck had been hard on the little droid. Still… “What kind of droid upgrade needs parts from a lightsaber?”

Rea only grins, wolfish.

It’s going to be a long night.


End file.
